Several years ago, a few of us here at PunkTorah bounced around the idea of a video siddur. Jeremiah, aka @circlepitbimah, was one of them.

The idea is pretty simple: a series of YouTube videos that played each portion of a siddur. Instead of opening a book, you would pop a DVD in (or go to a YouTube channel) and start your davvening. You could skip the parts you don’t do by pressing the forward button, in the same way you might flip over a few pages.

This is already somewhat possible through the power of YouTube playlists. While sitting next to my friend and colleague Don Kramer, I combed through the Shabbat service, picking videos and dropping them into the playlist below. Feel free to suggest better/different videos, as I did this in about 15 minutes.

The big questions are:

Do you like the idea of a video siddur?

What would you want in it? What would you want to exclude?

If we did this project as a community, how would you want to put it together?

Everything has a price: time, money, etc. What would you pay for a video siddur? How much time would you commit to making this project possible?

Or, if its all too much, just make your own playlists and post them below! We’re happy to share them.

The newest multimedia project from PunkTorah, The Shabbat Evening Zine is a zine (short for “magazine”) prayerbook featuring the Friday night Shabbat service in Hebrew, English and transliteration, as well as a Havdalah service and several short essays on the meaning of Shabbat.

If 90’s riot grrl feminists, punks, indie rockers and subversive crafters had a prayerbook, this would be it!

This siddur is only $9.99, now with FREE SHIPPING. You can also order an e-reader version of the zine or a print-and-bind-it-yourself version for only $5.99. All proceeds go to PunkTorah’s general fund.

There are only 30 in stock, so don’t wait! Need more than one copy? Order more than one and we will reimburse your shipping.

I glanced over at the gentleman to my right. As he stood, nose inches from the text, caught up in his prayers and oblivious to my gaze, my attention wandered to the cover of his siddur and remained there. Embedded into the cover was a compass.

The elegant poetry of this design choice was immediately apparent and delightful in a way that brightened the rest of my day.

It isn’t often that the tools we use to find out way both physically and spiritually are so nicely juxtaposed. Such a siddur ensures that we are facing Jerusalem literally and figuratively. It expresses the idea that we need tools to ensure we don’t lose our way. It admits to the reality that navigating a particular path can be a challenge. It also suggests that the owner is willing – if not to lead – then to help chart a course.

Very few items combine elements of the physical and of faith like this, and I have deep respect to the person who first thought of it.

It’s pretty cool to have a day job that involves writing and editing a siddur. But to be honest, at the end of the day, I really just looked forward to blasting my stereo on the way home from the office.

I imagine that the siddur is a mix tape of lamentations to G-d. And with that in mind, I tried to craft a playlist that, for me, would be the equivalent of a morning prayer service (Shacharit). Here’s my best shot:

The perfect song to start off your audio davening, the chorus “here comes your man” is like a blessing before study, leading you with its pop sweetness onto the stronger stuff, like an audio gateway drug.

The daily sacrifice is found in Orthodox siddurim, and a song by a band called The Knife only seems appropriate when dealing with issues of animal slaughter. Plus, I couldn’t think of a good metal transition from The Beach Boys…but I’m open to suggestions.

A darkwave song that reminds me of Psalm 30, since the psalm is about turning “mourning to dancing” and that’s about as goth as it gets (or maybe it would be more goth if it turned dancing into mourning?)

And speaking of mourning, Breed by Nirvana is my mourner’s kaddish. You’d think this kaddish would have reference to the dead or something dark (like Echo and the Bunnymen) but remember that Mourner’s Kaddish as a prayer never actually talks about the dead. Nirvana is so iconic (as is this kaddish in the Jewish prayer ritual) that I can’t help but put the two together.

Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen is the musical equivalent of the Shema.

I Was A Desert – Girls In Trouble

The Amidah, for me, is like a roller coaster. I start off with a slow build with the “Elohei Avraham, Sarai, Yitzak, etc. etc.” then go full steam with the chest striking. That’s what this song is like for me: layer after layer of guitars and percussion adding up to the explosion of “I was a desert until I learned to make the sky rain down on me.”

La Serena – DeLeon

Kaddish is one of those things where the element of group prayer really comes together. Since I like singing this song to myself in the car, it’s close enough to congregational prayer.

I think I would end my audio morning service with an Aleinu from David Bowie, especially since this song says “modern love puts my trust in G-d and Man” and Deuteronomy 4 talks about the idea of G-d being G-d alone…a similar, powerful statement.

And now for the Tehilim, the Psalms that you study after the service. For me, these are the songs that on their own don’t do it for me, but in this combo, really give me that extra boost…like a sonic cup of coffee.

Every year, the PunkTorah/OneShul community comes together to write the Community Siddur. And we need your help to make the next siddur bigger and better!

Below are just a few ideas to get you started. You can submit the original Orthodox Hebrew prayer (transliterated), your own prayer in any language, a poem, a meditation…whatever your heart moves you to. Don’t be afraid to be original (blessing of the pets? blessing for checking your email?) and feel free to submit as many pieces as you would like. Just email questions@punktorah.org to sign up. Hurry! People have already started signing up.